Congress enlists YouTube to grill the attorney general

Friday

YouTube, the video-sharing Web site that is reshaping the form of presidential debates, will now try its hand at revolutionizing Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

YouTube, the video-sharing Web site that is reshaping the form of presidential debates, will now try its hand at revolutionizing Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

With the blessing of Congress, YouTube plans to grill U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "and get the denials that the Senate Judiciary Committee can’t."

"It was clear we weren’t gong to get anywhere on our own," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the top Republican on the panel.

Specter was even hopeful that the "mind-bending format," in which Gonzales will have to deliver answers to video-recorded questions sent in by the public, will help encourage others to come forward to testify "and grab their chance for fame."

The Pennsylvania senator said it was one thing to stonewall "a bunch of elected old white men in suits with subpoena power" but quite another to turn up an opportunity at the latest reality production.

"I think the attorney general will find it a lot more difficult to tell untruths to ordinary Americans on video who could determine his standing in cyberspace," Specter said.

Gonzales will appear at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in Cambridge, where he will watch the questions being displayed on a 24-by-18-foot screen.

Questions submitted so far cover the government’s eavesdropping program, the possibility of allowing a presidentially-appointed prosecutor to investigate White House aides, the U.S. attorney firings, whether Harriet Miers was smarter than a fifth-grader and if Gonzales thought of himself as "satisfactorily feminine enough."

Some of the videos do not ask questions at all. In one, a man plays guitar and sings a song — "If I Had a Problem" — about the attorney general’s plans to stay on and "fix the problems" in the Justice Department, which is sung to the tune of "If I Had a Hammer" by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger.

Hours before last night's deadline, more than 2,300 videos recorded on Web cameras and cell phones had been submitted.

Among them is a 30-second clip from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who removes an IV tube from his arm, turns to the camera and says that Gonzales’ chances of survival are not as good as they would have been if Gonzales, then the White House counsel, had not come to his hospital bedside in March 2004 to try to pressure him into renewing the counterterror program.

"What would you, as attorney general, do to make it up to me?" Ashcroft sings into the camera to the same musical score as his famous "Let the Eagle Soar."

The YouTube event is being hailed by the organizers as a breakthrough, comparable to the impact of "American Idol" on entertainment.

YouTube's increasing coverage of politics was significant, according to one political insider.

"In the past, Congress sort of stuck their toe into the idea of empowering themselves through popular media — it was a small detail of what was going on," he said. "The difference in this hearing is that popularity and entertainment has become fundamental. If Congress can’t vote Gonzales ‘off the island.’ They’re going to enlist YouTube to do it for them. There is no end to where this could go, especially if Rupert Murdoch buys it."

Some bloggers, who see the internet as a democratic free-for-all, have expressed unhappiness about the involvement of Congress. They are upset that Congress is being allowed to select the 25 to 30 questions for the attorney general, perhaps lessening the chance of a really inappropriate video interrogative slipping through.

But Steve Grove, head of YouTube's news and politics section, assured YouTube aficionados, through his own video post, that Congress has a history of asking badly-chosen questions and should hardly be viewed as a filter of good taste.

"These are the same people that help provide endless content on a daily basis for YouTube. I think we all owe them a debt of daily gratitude for doing the people’s work better than the people could ever have hoped to," Grove said.

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, appearing on video and cradling a rifle which he described as his "baby," said Gonzales stands by his testimony, whatever it may be.

"I think he is going to relish this," Roehrkasse said. "He thinks the American people have been cut out of Washington politics and he just want to make sure he is right."

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